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Talk:Nicole Nichols
A shame the Perry wasn't crawling with Shatners and Nimoys and Doohans and Takeis. That would have been amusing. Or even Stewarts and Spiners and Burtons. You know, HB really was full of a lot of cultural references. That one Lizard detective was based on Columbo, you had the GWTW thing, and I believe Donald's game show was a homage to something or other. Turtle Fan 23:50, March 9, 2010 (UTC) :Still haven't read it. TR 23:55, March 9, 2010 (UTC) ::I'm very much torn on whether it added to the story or not, even after all these years. After I read it--when the most recent TL-191 book was RE and we still had every reason to assume that series would continue to produce good books--my thought was "I hope he takes that as a warning and doesn't write any epilogue novels after the Second Great War ends." Little did I know that I should have been wishing he wouldn't even finish that war. Turtle Fan 01:25, March 10, 2010 (UTC) :This sentence seems to be missing a clause: " Once in system, Nichols became something of a liaison officer with both the Race--...." Both implies the Race and another party. TR 00:00, March 10, 2010 (UTC) ::I had the Amazon search inside open in another tab as I was writing and I had to keep rewriting as I read new stuff. I'd long since forgotten everything about her except that she was Uhura (though from her description tshe sounds more like Zoe Saldena's Uhura than the real one, though of course HB was written long before the Trek reboot). The only reason I wrote this was because I thought it would be cool to slip in a Trek reference. I had tried to do a blitz of HB articles in the early days of our participation here, but it was such an uninspiring book that I gave up after an hour or two. Turtle Fan 01:25, March 10, 2010 (UTC) You know, I wish HT had just named her Nichelle Nichols, or shifted it to Michelle Nichols, or used her birth name of Grace Nichols, or mixed her with Roddenberry's wife as Majel Nichols, or feminized Roddenberry and made her Eugenia Nichols, or made it a half Trek half Star Wars gag as Carrie Nichols, or even pulled a Clark Butler and made it Nyota Nichols--anything! Nicole Nichols is a really unfortunate name, going beyond Russians named after their fathers who still have patronymics anyway, like Andrei Andreyevich Gromyko, and approaching the level of Sirhan Sirhan or Boutros Boutros Boutros Boutros Boutros Boutros Boutros Ghali. Turtle Fan 05:33, March 10, 2010 (UTC) "She quickly gained a reputation for formidability, unflappability, and unlikeability . . ." The last part sounds more like Shatners' reputation among his fellow Trek actors especially the supporting cast. ML4E 22:03, March 10, 2010 (UTC) :And most especially Takei. Also, it seems Shatner was a dick to Wil Wheaton once, so he spread it around to the spinoff actors as well. I haven't heard of any tensions with Nichols. Turtle Fan 02:55, March 11, 2010 (UTC) ::Something about Wheaton invites dickish behavior. It isn't just Shatner. :::Roddenberry loved him--Wesley was Roddenberry's middle name and he said he based Wheaton's character in large part on his own. "The kid who knows how to do fucking EVERYTHING but gets no respect because he's a doofus? Yeah, that was me." He was very close with the actor as well. :::Other than that, Wheaton-hating stories abound. According to his reminisces about making TNG, the whole production staff despised him and his co-stars at best tolerated him, though I'm suspicious of any first-hand account that takes such a consistent "Everything sucked and it was all because people didn't listen to me" tone. On the Star Trek edition of The Weakest Link, he was unbelievably obnoxious to Roxann Dawson. :::Apparently Wheaton is a popular feature on the sci-fi convention circuit because his three and a half years as a regular cast member of a Star Trek spinoff make him about the closest thing to SF royalty that's willing to appear at half-assed whistle stop meet-and-greets in a comic book store in somebody's strip mall. My very good friend somehow became rather well acquainted with Wheaton on one of these circuits. Jim said Wheaton was likeable at first but eventually wore out his welcome. Turtle Fan 05:19, March 11, 2010 (UTC) ::I'd heard some vague something about Nichols decades ago, but I forget the specifics. Doohan said he flat out didn't like Shatner in his memoir. TR 03:01, March 11, 2010 (UTC) :::I've never heard of Nichols having problems with Shatner but it wouldn't surprise me. I do remember that she was much closer to Roddenberry than most of the TOS cast--she and Wheaton could have hung out. When Paramount told Roddenberry they weren't going to let him make any more Star Trek movies after his first boring-ass attempt at it, Nichols took his side. She's also the only cast member who's said she liked Roddenberry's movie better than Wrath of Khan. And when Roddenberry was accused of leaking the news of Spock's death to the press long before the movie came out, some suspicion attached to Nichols as well. Could that be what you're thinking of? ::::No, I was not aware Nichols and Roddenberry were that close. Or of any of that other stuff. This was something specific to Nichols and Shatner, some sort of on-set confrontation. :::::Something with the Plato's Stepchildren kiss, perhaps? ::::::I read somewhere (might have been Shatner's autobiography so it would have been confessional) that they were having problems shooting a scene on the bridge set and so Shatner suggested they eliminate Nichols' one line to improve the flow since it wasn't vital to the scene. This would have reduced her appearance to a non-speaking extra and so she voiced her objection and Shatner backed down. However, it still illustrates what a camera hogging ham he was and there may have been other occurrences. ML4E 21:43, March 12, 2010 (UTC) :::::::Well I hate to say it, but if this one irrelevant line was fucking up the scene (What was it, something like "Starfleet Command on Frequency Two, Captain"?) then it shouldn't have been left in just to keep her happy. I understand her resentment, but it's not Shatner's fault (I don't believe) that her character was so badly written and had so few meaningful lines. "That's not true, Mr Spock, they give us love!" "Why, Mr President, don't be embarrassed. In my century people have learned that words are just words." Turtle Fan 01:32, March 13, 2010 (UTC) :::::The Twin Towers of Shatner-hating were Doohan and Takei. Not saying Nicholls wasn't involved, or Koenig, or even Kelly who actually got his name in the credits. Nimoy and Shatner have always been close. And the funny thing is, long before I learned any of this I would watch Star Trek and think "Doohan and Takei are two very talented actors. I wonder why they're so underutilized?" Turtle Fan 20:00, March 11, 2010 (UTC) :::Shatner's problems with colleagues have extended into the twenty-first century. Apparently he's tried to reprise the role of Kirk twice: He wanted to join Nimoy in ST XI and Abrams flat-out told him to fuck off. Before that he was negotiating with the Enterprise people to reprise the role of Mirror Universe Kirk in a time-travel story set in said Mirror Universe. The parties involved couldn't agree on how much to pay Shatner so the whole thing collapsed and they did the Mirror Universe story about finding the ship from the Tholian Web instead. The storyline they had for him was dumber than a bag of doorknobs, but there was no saving Enterprise at that point anyway and having Kirk on screen again would have been enjoyable. Beats the shit out of Riker and Troi playing a goddamned holodeck program in the middle of a TNG mission and calling it the finale. Turtle Fan 05:19, March 11, 2010 (UTC) ::::I'd heard about that former part. Seriously, if Shatner was going to have that hard of a time letting go, he shouldn't have participated in Kirk's death in Generations. TR 15:47, March 11, 2010 (UTC) :::::Death is impermanent in Trek. Kirk died twice in that movie, after all; if he could be unkilled once, why not twice? Spock, Scotty, Picard, Data, LaForge, Worf, Yar, Wesley, Ro Laren, Sisko, O'Brien, Curzon, Dukat, Weyoun, Morn, Janeway, Paris, Kim, Torres, Neelix, Kes, Seven of Nine, the Borg Queen, Tucker, Sato, Shran. . . . I think that's all of them. All were killed and then unkilled. (What a geek I am. I could probably give you the episodes in which they temporarily died.) :::::Kirk was in that Nexus thing for all those years. If you're in the Nexus you can leave and go to any time, any place. Not sure why he would decide to leave the Nexus in, say, 2345 and either join Spock for his misadventure in 2387 or go to the alternate universe. (Not sure why anyone would decide to go to the alternate universe, but that's another story.) It could have been worked around. Or ignored altogether. Abrams openly bragged about how his movie would target people who hate Star Trek and wrote a script that said "ALL of Star Trek never happened now, fukkas!!!!!!" I doubt he would have died of sorrow at the idea of ignoring what had always been a rather unpopular bit of canon anyway. :::::No, I imagine he was just afraid Shatner would be too much of a prima donna. That, or the presence of the real Kirk would highlight how shitty the new one is even further. Turtle Fan 20:00, March 11, 2010 (UTC) ::::::In an interview I read with Abrams, it was to be a cameo, as a holographic projection by Old Spock when he meets New Kirk for the first time. Shatner demanded a bigger role to which Abrams refused. ML4E 21:43, March 12, 2010 (UTC) :::::::Prima donna, then. Sounds sort of like Abrams wanted to use Shatner the way Shatner's accused of having wanted to use everyone else. :::::::Actually I'm glad it didn't happen if that's all it was supposed to be. The scene with Nimoy was the only time I ever felt like I was watching Star Trek, and this hologram things sounds like it would have ruined it: ::::::::"No, really, we really are supposed to be best friends! See? Watch this." ::::::::"Help ME, Obi-'Wan' Kenobi. You're my--only hope!" Turtle Fan 01:32, March 13, 2010 (UTC) :::::::I stumbled upon an old statement from Shatner. He denies ever having been approached with a cameo but says there are no hard feelings. That's also what he says about Takei's wedding invitation, among other things. It does seem unlikely that one person would be publicly falsely accused of snubbing so many people in so many unrelated inidents. Turtle Fan 03:43, May 11, 2010 (UTC)